We can identify the meaning of an image in 13 milliseconds. Photographic images are the visual communication currency of our time, and influence us because of the psychological associations we have with with the content. I’m playing with the relative power of images and how we “digest” them by making them literally edible. I’m also playing with the common practice of mistaking the image for the actual thing it represents. I surveyed friends on social media as to what images are emotional triggers for them - hospitals, white power rallies, homeless shelters, cancer, exhaust pipes, guns, the twin towers, etc. I do a Google image search for the word and then choose the image that when cropped seems to have the most visual interest. The image is then printed with (FDA-approved) edible ink onto edible paper made of potato starch. During the exhibition I print out two copies of the image and I eat the image with the person who has told me their trigger. This is a play on religious communion and also the idea in modern psychology (exposure therapy) that when you expose yourself to emotional triggers repeatedly in a safe environment they lose their power to affect you.

I was invited to be part of this exhibition centered on recent development and construction surges around the Charleston, SC area. I spent time underneath the bridges connecting island neighborhoods to the downtown urban peninsula.

In 1996 I had done a Maine Photographic Workshop (now called the Maine Media Workshops) with a National Geographic photographer. I met the workshop founder David Lyman during my stay and got his email. I wanted to do the Mary Ellen Mark workshop down in Oaxaca the following year and said I could help out with my Spanish language skills. David told me to keep in touch and that I could work in exchange for the cost of the workshop in Mexico. I booked a plane ticket to San Antonio, took a bus the rest of the way down and arrived the morning of the workshop. David was there and I saw Mary Ellen and I announced that I was here to help. She knew nothing about it! It was eventually sorted out and I was the contact sheet printer for each student. I was enrolled in the workshop so I would meet with Mary Ellen in the morning to look over any images I had taken (printed myself the night before in the darkroom), go shoot during the day, come back later for talks and presentations, go to sleep, then wake up at midnight to print everyones’ contact sheets. Then I would walk home, go to sleep and do it all over again. The workshop lasted a week and I think the most valuable thing I learned from it was that a photographer should move their body and not just stand in one place shooting from the head. Look for more interesting vantage points. I also learned that if you wanted good portraits you had to connect with people not just point a camera at them.

When I first arrived to grad school I did not have anything resembling a consistent art practice. Faced with two years of time to work, I was paralyzed as to where to begin. I was a bit obsessed with airplanes at the time, so my advising Professor encouraged me to keep following the trail. At the time one could park at the end of the runway at Sea-Tac Airport and when the planes would take off they would fly right over my sunroof. The images begin showing the arenas where planes live - the boundaries, the symbolism of control. When I looked at them closely I saw they become like abstract paintings, and you can see the human variance in the lines that are supposed to be so clear and sharp. The black and white images are shot from the end of the runway at Sea-Tac. They are silver (a metal element) gelatin prints and show my inherent mistrust of these flying metal capsules. Later I am taking airline tickets and corrupting them. I see these as a precursor to glitching but they are also showing the frailty of the information or control contained within. I wouldn’t call these prescient, but all of the images feel more important after the events of 9/11.

C-print made with black and white sandwiched negatives.

I made these images while taking a class in traditional color darkroom printing. We learned to print one image at a time and color balance them. Most of these in this series were made by waving color gels under the enlarger to create unique hues for each print. Each color layer of the c-print was exposed individually. In terms of the image layering, I was interested in showing how an experience of one place can often trigger the memory of a another. The photographic records are physically stacked but their interaction is interpreted in the moment of the final print exposure.

C-print made with black and white negatives.

C-print. This print was actually made by exposing the paper twice with two different negatives.

C-print made with sandwiched black and white negatives.

c-print.

c-print.

c-print.

silver gelatin print.

c-print.

c-print.

silver gelatin print.

silver gelatin print.

silver gelatin print.

c-print.

c-print.

silver gelatin print.

silver gelatin print.

c-print.

c-print.

silver gelatin print.

Silver gelatin print.